Bloggings on Immigration Law

The Republicans' favorite right wing extremist fanatic, Michele Bachmann, and their comic relief star, Herman Cain, have been putting on entertaining sideshows to divert attention from the more boring front runners, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. Perry is better at using taxpayer money to hand out favors to his big campaign contributors in Texas than he is at expressing himself in the English language, and Romney has lied and flipped-flopped about his record on so many issues that even his most dedicated (and wealthy) supporters have long since lost count.

Bachmann and Cain, on the other hand, never cease to amaze with their falsehoods and absurdities, the most recent being Cain's Koch brothers inspired "9-9-9" plan, which would put most of the tax burden on those who can least afford it. However, despite a temporary bump in the polls for Cain, no serious observer gives either him or Bachmann any chance of being nominated as a presidential candidate next year, let alone elected.

This is despite Cain's close connections with and past financial support from these very same Koch brothers. Yet neither candidate seems ready to give up. Not, at least, while there are still campaign funds to be spent, book contracts to be signed (Cain already has one - can Bachmann be far behind?), and, no doubt, the lucrative Fox News "Analyst" positions waiting in the wings.

It should be no surprise, therefore, that both candidates have taken the desperate step of stirring up anti-Latino hate by calling for a multi-billion dollar Mexican border fence. Cain accuses Mexican immigrants of killing US border agents. But the number of would-be immigrants who have died at the Mexican border within the past few years ranges from 2,000 to over 5,000, acording to most estimates.

Cain would use electrified fences to increase this number, even though he now claims to be joking. When President Obama made a humorous remark about Republicans who wanted to build a border moat with alligators, Cain replied that he was in favor of this idea. Maybe, instead of a Fox News spot, Cain should have his own late night comedy show.

In Bachmann's case, the most vicious kind of bigotry comes to her as naturally and effortlessly as the most sublime music in Western history did to the immortal composer who, ironically, shared the first four letters of her last name, or the profound writings of the great 20th century novelist who shared the last four letters of the same name. Not only did Bachmann repeat the familiar attempts to scapegoat immigrants for our strictly Made in America economic problems, but she even threw in the standard racist canard about how her Norwegian ancestors came to America legally, learned English and assimilated, in supposed contrast to today's Latinos.

Of course, when Bachmann's ancestors arrived in America, almost all immigrants were legal as long as they were healthy and white. There are also studies showing that today's Mexicans and other Latin Americans learn English faster than the European immigrants of 100 years ago.

Bachmann's anti-immigrant tirades are part of her larger pattern of hate - against gays, against Congressional Democrats, whom she has called "Un-American", and even against Libyan freedom fighters, whom she has falsely accused of being Al-Qaeda supporters. But while Bachmann and Cain may be good at exploiting hate, they are not as good at math. Pew Hispanic Center figures put the total 2010 number of eligible Latino voters at 21.3 million, up from 13.2 million in 2000. If the Republicans want to take back the White House, a little less prejudice and a little better arithmetic might be in order.

But why are Latinos, such an important and fast-growing group of American citizens, unable to use their numbers, their votes and their economic power more effectively? Why do they seem to have so much difficulty making their influence felt? How can Barack Obama, who was supposed to be the ally of immigrants and other minorities in America, continue to get away with deporting 400,000 Latino, Asian and black immigrants each year without a greater backlash?

In the Occupy Wall Street movement, tens, or hundreds, of thousands of Americans are protesting against exploitation by powerful financial interests. But where are the protests, the demonstrations, the outrage, against anti-immigrant racism and hate? Where are the peaceful, nationwide marches, rallies, sit-ins, boycots and strikes against the attempts by Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Arizona and other states to bring back the days of segregation and racial persecution? Have Latinos and other minorities become too intimidated to make their voices heard?

I do not claim to be an expert on the history of the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's. But I am a member of a generation that was there, not one that only reads about it in the history books, hears about it from their parents, or sees short edited clips on TV news shows lasting 30 seconds or so. Growing up in New York, I was not on the front lines of the civil rights struggle. But at least I had an observer's seat.

In the early 1960's as a young law school graduate, I worked for a small firm in New York which represented a number of civil rights activists. One of the partners was an advisor to Martin Luther King, and the firm represented Dr. King in a successful attempt to obtain an injunction in Federal District Court against people who were trying to use his "I Have A Dream" speech commercially without his permission. I played a very small behind the scenes role in helping to prepare the complaint.

More importantly, almost everyone growing up during that period was part of the discussion about equal rights for African-Americans (a phrase which only came into use later on, but was not widely heard in the 1960's). And it was a discussion. The idea that people of color should have equal rights with white people was not only anathema in the South, but was far from widely accepted in the North. For many white Americans, in New York and everywhere else, the idea that African-Americans should have equal rights to vote, go to school, ride on the bus, or sit at lunch counters was just as controversial as immigration rights are now.

Refusing to obey the Southern segregation laws was considered by many people to be just as heinous as violating the immigration laws is now. I do not mean to equate immigration laws with segregation laws. The latter had no justification whatsoever. They were based solely on the notion that one race of people was biologically inferior to another. Immigration laws, on the other hand, are there to control America's population and preserve its resources, as well as to serve other purposes according to the needs of our society.

But no one who has been an adult in both periods can be blind to the common element in public attitudes toward these laws. The rage and fury that greeted attempts to abolish segregation in the 1950's and 1960's can only be matched by the anger over the growth of immigration, both by legal and illegal mmigrants, today. In both periods, the common feeling has been that a persecuted and despised ethnicity, a "genus invisum", to quote Virgil, whether black people then or Latinos now, should stay "in its place". That place used to be the black ghettos of the old South. Now it is Mexico.

That is the message that states which were former bastions of slavery and segregation and now have recently passed draconian anti-immigrant laws, such as Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, are sending out to the rest of America. Many other states, which are trying to prevent all minorities, including African-Americans, Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, from voting in next year's election, are sending the same message.

Will the rest of the country be foolish and bigoted enough to follow that message? Equally important, when will America finally have a president who, like Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, will have the courage to recognize the evil of racism in America head on and fight against it? If only America had such a president now.

About The Author

Roger Algase is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He has been practicing business immigration law in New York City for more than 20 years

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of ILW.COM.